ABSTRACT
Adorno died in 1969, leaving his Aesthetic Theory unfinished. In 1967 the Parisian philosopher Jacques Derrida published three works - Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference and Of Grammatology - which were to have an enormous impact, not only on French philosophy, but also on the understanding of texts and institutions in a much wider sphere. These books, in conjunction with his subsequent prolific output, have been presented by Derrida, and interpreted by his followers, as representing a radical break with the tradition of Western metaphysics; a tradition that Derrida, in keeping with his Heideggerian background, understands as inextricably bound up with notions of origin and presence. Though couched in different terminology, Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysics, which is undertaken by exploring the rift between intention and meaning in text (understood as a broad range of human activity), bears much in common with Adorno's vigilant practice of exposing the heterogeneous qualities of experience repressed by systems of thought aspiring to absolutist status. It is, however, inadequate to regard Adorno as a deconstructionist avant la lettre: meaning, for him, is couched in terms of a philosophy of concept and object; in Derrida's case, meaning is formed within a system of semiotic difference.
